


casualty

by TricksterNag1to



Series: Chainsmokers AU [16]
Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Character Study, F/F, I love her, Involving a great deal of browsing of motorcycles by the author, Mondo-Centric, Past ChiMondo, SHES GOOD, Trans girl Mondo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 09:49:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10694523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TricksterNag1to/pseuds/TricksterNag1to
Summary: casualty (n):a person killed or injured in a war or accident.a person or thing badly affected by an event or situation.(chiefly in insurance) an accident, mishap, or disaster.





	casualty

Oowada had worked hard to get where she was. Going into her penultimate year of high school, her grades hadn’t been so good. It wasn’t her fault, though - the teachers just…. didn’t teach. Or maybe the entire concept of trigonometry was out to get her. Those were two very likely options. 

 

Either way, she’d hit the books - or, rather, paid her best friend to tutor her so she could actually understand what the hell arc-tangent was - and pulled off some pretty good marks in time for college applications. It was enough, at least, for Hope’s Peak to want her.

 

She would’ve been fine if she hadn’t been accepted anywhere, she thought, if she had started working straight out of high school. She was mediocre at academics and didn’t care for any of it. What had always captivated her were motorcycles.

 

For Oowada, motorcycles were change. They were freedom, and transformation, and the thrill of life itself. Her hands, which had always been clumsy and large to her, became strong and skilled, callouses allowing her to reach right into the heart of a bike and prod around without fear. Numbers had never really clicked in her brain in the classroom, but horsepower had always made sense, and, she found, so did the numbers that raced through her mind as she raced down the street.

 

Plus, it looked fucking awesome.

 

If she had nothing else in the world, Oowada had her Yamaha. Her brother had given it to her when she was seventeen as a birthday present. She remembered waking up that morning to him standing over her bed like he used to when she was five and he’d gotten word that she’d punched a kid in the face during naptime. (It was usually Ishimaru, for continually insisting she sleep even though she was wide awake.) (She’d calmed down a lot since she was five.)

 

Daiya had stood there and she’d asked him what he’d wanted, it was too early to be awake (he’d replied, “It’s noon, dumbass,” without missing a beat) and he’d pulled her out of bed and down to the garage. And there, shiny and new, was a beautiful red bike. 

 

And when Daiya crashed his matching one and busted all his bones and Fujisaki broke up with her, Oowada realized she really did have nothing else in the world.

 

She didn’t even understand why she’d said what she’d said. The really smart girl in her criminology class had said it was a knee-jerk reaction to the trauma of almost losing Daiya, and Oowada had said her knee would be jerking into Kirigiri’s stomach if she tried to psychoanalyze her one more time. Kirigiri had also said that Oowada had been so upset she’d blamed the only person she could’ve. Maybe if Oowada was smarter, she would’ve agreed. And then Kirigiri reminded her that Taichi was  _ actually _ dead and she’d shut up real fast.

 

She was angry for a long time. At the Fujisakis, at Kirigiri, at Daiya.

 

Ishimaru had been a big help. She’d slept on his couch for a week before he insisted that she share the bed with him, because they’d been best friends since kindergarten and they’d come a long way since naptime.

 

Slowly, though, as time went on, things began to look like they might be okay soon. 

 

Kirigiri took her out to lunch, and then to visit Daiya in the hospital. 

 

Naegi brought her a care package when Ishimaru was out for the day and she was still feeling too shitty to leave her bed. (Everything inside but the sparkly hairclips went into either her closet or the fridge. The clips went into her hair all at once, and then everything was a little better.)

 

Daiya came home on crutches. Oowada helped him get settled into his place again and stayed a few nights before heading back to campus in time for class. 

 

She smiled at Fujisaki in the hall. They smiled back. It was small, and probably out of courtesy, but it was a start.

 

After a month, when Oowada decided she was ready to ask Daiya if she could move in again, Ishimaru asked her to stay for the remainder of the year. They brought in her things together in big boxes that Oowada wasn’t even sure Ishimaru could carry. He managed to lug them in far enough for her to take over, though; she laughed every time she saw him stumbling in, huffing and puffing with a twenty-pound box. The dude probably couldn’t even lift an especially fat cat. 

 

When things were finished, and all of her stuff was in their tiny-ass dorm, Oowada grabbed her jacket and her helmet and ran outside to her bike.

 

It was bliss to feel the wind on her face again. She slowed as she turned a corner and directed herself down a hill, allowing gravity to whip back the hair that was not fully in her helmet. The stars shimmered as the last rays of the sun were swallowed by the horizon. She drove for what felt like ages, but was considerably less than that, until the moon was high in the sky and the air bit her nose. 

 

And there, standing on a bridge overlooking a wide, smooth river, Oowada thought about things. Daiya. Fujisaki. Fujisaki’s dad. Who was dead because of Daiya. Who was probably going to jail. Because he killed Fujisaki’s dad. Because he was drunk. Fujisaki broke up with her. Because she blamed their dad. Because she was scared. 

 

She pulled out her phone and dialed the first number in her contacts.

“Kyodai? Meet me at the bridge. Let’s get some food.”


End file.
